Book review: Hanna Adoni, Dan Caspi and Akiba A. Cohen Media, Minorities and Hybrid Identities: The Arab and Russian Communities in Israel Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006. 218 pp. ISBN 157273700X
Abstract
Theodore L.Glasser Stanford University Media, Minorities and Hybrid Identities contributes in interesting and important ways to the growing body of literature on the role of media, particularly journal- ism, in multicultural societies. Hanna Adoni, Dan Caspi and Akiba A. Cohen, three prominent Israeli scholars, seek answers to the `question of how the pro- duction and consumption of mass media for and by minorities interact with identity politics'. The authors take on the phenomenon of multiculturalism where they locate it, which is in Israel between 1989 and 1998 among members of two sizeable and politically signi cant minority groups. One of these groups, recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, lives in Israel as what the authors call a `voluntary' or `willing' minority. `Russian Jews', a popular but not entirely accurate label that refers to a common language rather than a shared nationality, began to arrive in Israel in large numbers during the 1970s and in even larger numbers (nearly six times as many) in the late 1980s as part of the `returning Diaspora'. Under Israel's immigration laws, which apply to any Jew who wants to `return' to Israel, Russian Jews bene ted immediately and unconditionally from the rights